The goal of science is to increase our knowledge about the reality around us. This raises the question of what knowledge is and what differentiates it from beliefs and guesswork. The rise of the internet and the enormous amount of information stored in it has made it even harder to distinguish real scientific knowledge from other kinds of less reliable information. Therefore, every one of us should practice recognizing real scientific knowledge.

Although a lot of what constitutes scientific knowledge changes and is replaced by newer and more accurate scientific information, the results gained from scientific research provide the most reliable information accessible to us at this moment. The criteria for research are the same for all fields of the natural sciences.

Valid scientific knowledge is comprised of the following things:

• It has been made based on reliable observation.
• It follows logic. Not everything needs to be or even can be studied directly. Instead, we can trust logical conclusions. For example, 2 x 1 000 = 2 000, even if you do not count it with your fingers.
• It is objective, or the same for all observers. The feelings and wishes of the researcher cannot influence the results of their research.
• The results of the research have been reached with sufficient, randomized data. Single occurrences or individual organisms do not provide adequate sources of information.

The research must be repeatable. The methods and stages of the study must be precisely explained. If the experiment is valid, others can repeat the experiment and get similar results.

Gaining valid scientific knowledge requires diligent research.